He has read over with pain and distaste the brief words in which he chronicled that first chance meeting with Nancy Dampier. What excitement, what adventures, and yes, what bitter sorrow had that chance meeting under the porte cochère of the Hôtel Saint Ange brought in its train! If only he and Daisy had started out an hour earlier on that June morning just two years ago how much they would have been spared.
As for the fortune left to him, Senator Burton is now inclined to think that it has brought him less than no good. It has only provided Gerald with an excuse, which to an American father is no excuse, for neglecting his profession. Further, it has enabled the young man to spend money in a prodigal fashion over what even he now acknowledges to have been a hopeless quest, though even at the present moment detectives in every capital in Europe are watching for a clue which may afford some notion as to the whereabouts of John Dampier.
John Dampier? Grim, relentless spectre who pursues them unceasingly, and from whose menacing, shadowy presence they are never free—from whom, so the Senator has now despairingly come to believe, they never, never will be free….
He had stopped his diary abruptly on the evening of that now far-off day when his eyes had been so rudely opened to his son's state of mind and heart. But though he has no written record to guide him the Senator finds it only too easy, on this beautiful June morning, to go back, in dreary retrospective, over these two long years.
Gerald had not found it possible to keep his rash vow; there had come a day when he had had to go back to America—indeed, he has been home three times. But those brief visits of his son to his own country brought the father no comfort, for each time Gerald left behind him in Europe not only his heart, but everything else that matters to a man—his interests, his longings, his hopes.
Small wonder that in time Senator Burton and Daisy had also fallen into the way of spending nearly the whole of the Senator's spare time in Europe, and with Nancy Dampier.
Nancy? The mind of the watcher by the window turns to her too, as he visions the slender, graceful figure now pacing slowly by his son's side.
Is it unreasonable that, gradually withdrawing herself from her old friends, those friends who did not believe that Dampier had left her save of his own free will, Nancy should cling closer and closer to her new friends? No, not at all unreasonable, but, from the Senator's point of view, very unfortunate. Daisy and Nancy are now like sisters, and to the Senator himself she shows the loving deference, the affection of a daughter, but with regard to the all-important point of her relations to Gerald, none of them know the truth—indeed, it may be doubted if she knows it herself.
But the situation gets more difficult, more strained every month, every week, almost every day. Senator Burton feels that the time has come when something must be done to end it—one way or the other—and the day before yesterday he sought out Mr. Stephens, now one of his closest friends and advisers, in order that they might confer together on the matter. As he stands there looking down at the two figures walking across the dewy grass, he remembers with a sense of boding fear the conversation with Nancy's lawyer.
"There's nothing to be done, my poor friend, nothing at all! Our English marriage laws are perfectly clear, and though this is a very, very hard case, I for my part have no wish to see them altered."